me and opportunity he made his; and after
THAT she was as bad as he."

Strether vaguely took it up. "As 'bad'?"

"She began, that is, to care--to care very much. Alone, and in her
horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest.
It was, it is, an interest, and it did--it continues to do--a lot for
herself as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact," said little
Bilham thoughtfully "more."

Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not
damaged by the way he took this. "More, you mean, than he?" On which
his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes
met. "More than he?" he repeated.

Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. "Will you never tell any one?"

Strether thought. "Whom should I tell?"

"Why I supposed you reported regularly--"

"To people at home?"--Strether took him up. "Well, I won't tell them
this."

The young man at last looked away. "Then she does now care more than
he."

"Oh!" Strether oddly exclaimed.

But his companion immediately met it. "Haven't you after all had your
impression of it? That's how you've got hold of him."

"Ah but I haven't got hold of him!"

"Oh I say!" But it was all little Bilham said.

"It's at any rate none of my business. I mean," Strether explained,
"nothing else than getting hold of him is." It appeared, however, to
strike him as his business to add: "The fact remains nevertheless that
she has saved him."

Little Bilham just waited. "I thought that was what you were to do."

But Strether had his answer ready. "I'm speaking--in connexion with
her--of his manners and morals, his character and life. I'm speaking
of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with--speaking
of him as a social animal."

"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?"

"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him FOR us."

"It strikes you accordingly then," the young man threw out, "as for you
all to save HER?"

"Oh for us 'all'--!" Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him
back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. "They've
accepted their situation--hard as it is. They're not free--at least
she's not; but they take what's left to them. It's a friendship, of a
beautiful sort; and that's what makes them so strong. They're
straight, they feel; and they keep each other up. It's doubtless she,
however, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it mo